Best Way To Encrypt Data In PHP

Hi,

You can use the mcrypt_encrypt and mcrypt_decrypt functions (PHP 4 >= 4.0.2, PHP 5):
http://php.net/manual/en/function.mcrypt-encrypt.php[^]
http://php.net/manual/en/function.mcrypt-decrypt.php[^]
Or the openssl_encrypt and openssl_decrypt functions (PHP 5 >= 5.3.0):
http://php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-encrypt.php[^]
http://php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-decrypt.php[^]
http://stackoverflow.com/a/6639179[^]

But if you want to encrypt/decrypt a password, use hashing, because you can't decrypt a hashed string.
The hash method (PHP 5 >= 5.1.2, PECL hash >= 1.1):
http://php.net/manual/en/function.hash.php[^]
Q: But if you can't decrypt it, how do you check whether a given password is correct?
A: Try this (for example if your password is hashed using SHA-256:

<?php
if (hash('sha256', $givenPsswd) == $hashedPsswd) // change $givenPsswd and $hashedPsswd into the names of your variables
{
 // given password is correct
}
?>

Hope this helps.